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Thursday, 26 May 2011

Wooo! Over halfway there now. Today the weather has been beyond horrible and of course today is the day that the little one decides to make a big hole in the raincover on his pushchair. It also was not the right type of day for the girl to wear a long princess dress to school either! I got soaking wet collecting them this afternoon and was looking forward to something substantial for dinner, so it's a good job I was going to be trying to make the Cranks Homity Pie. I have always been intrigued by this recipe, it's one of their most popular, but I was put off by the dreaded pastry! I am no good at pastry, at all. And why would today be any different? I decided after 0.3 seconds of putting my hands in the butter and flour that I would make it in the food processor. I don't mind pastry once it has combined but the initial mixing bit is so sticky and gets everywhere and I don't like having messy hands.

I put the pastry into the fridge to rest and got on with chopping the onions. And decided to do them in the processor too. The original recipe uses 1lb of onions. Have you seen how much that is? It's a lot! I ended up doing about half the amount and it was plenty. I couldn't find my swimming goggles (yes, I wear goggles to cut onions!) and ended up doing the onion dance where the eyewatering gets too much and you have to retreat to the other end of the kitchen till your vision comes back. Once the onions were cooking I set about putting the pastry in the tin and it just wouldn't roll out at all so I pushed it into the tin instead. I had used Trex vegetable fat which says as it has no water to add 20% less than the recipe states which I did but maybe that is what caused the problem? I had to add more water than 3tbsp. I also did half white flour and half wholemeal. I steamed the potatoes (I added a bit more than the recipe) and mixed it with the cheese, onions and garlic and topped with more cheese. Here it is ready for the oven.

And 25 minutes later. We had it with broccoli, peas and carrots as I think it had enough carbohydrates as it was.

If I make this again it will have less garlic (no vampires here tonight!) and I have no idea how anyone would fit twice the amount of onions into it. I used 4 and it filled my frying pan. I also forgot the butter and it wasn't missed. I also would make this in advance as it created a lot of washing up and used a lot of workspace and I was constantly having to move things around. My pastry skills still need work but it was definitely edible. One for the drawing board I think.

Earlier today, despite the wet weather, myself and the little one went to a Antique and Collectable Fair that is on locally every Thursday and thankfully under cover. I picked up this for 50p. It is fantastic! Amongst the obviously very dated stuff there are some very beautiful and wearable things.

I also bought for £2 a Greist buttonhole attachment that I'm still looking into but judging by some blog and forum posts out there it is compatible with modern sewing machines. I just need time to have a play with it now. The children have now finished school for the next 10 days so I need to find some things to do with them that don't cost lots of money. I just hope it won't rain the whole week!

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Hellooo!

How are you? Thank you for visiting me here at Happy Elastic. I'm a thirty-something mum to three children and wife to a man with a beard. We live fairly harmoniously in our complete wreck of a house in Staffordshire, UK.